


A Rake and A Hoyden

by TobermorianSass



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Regency, F/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Regency Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 11:49:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4520838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/pseuds/TobermorianSass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The <em>ton</em> has many truths and even more opinions concerning the characters of Miss Stark and Mr Tyrell. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle, between Sansa's daring flirtations, Willas' overturned curricle and the Battle of Waterloo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Rake and A Hoyden

Here is a truth: Sansa is – not  _fast_ or an  _easy bit of skirt_ , precisely, or anything as dramatic, but she is slightly wrong. Slightly wrong because once upon a time, she let the Prince take snuff from her wrist several times too many and slightly wrong because once, she had allowed herself to trade a kiss with a man, many times her senior, to save her mother’s diamonds from the table. Also, slightly wrong, because her father had once supported the Americans and argued that the Prime Minister ought to be circumspect in their war with the French and was consequently, a Whiggish radicaland a virtuous man when neither was in fashion. Sansa, therefore, attends parties in the company of Margaery Tyrell who is just as fast as she and even worse, paints her toenails.

Margaery, however, gets none of the sideways glances that Sansa does and Sansa suspects this has to do with the fact that Margaery once raced her brother in a curricle to Brighton and averted any ensuing scandal simply by holding her head high. In a week, the _ton_ had shrugged it off as another one of Miss Tyrell’s quirks, just as the youngest Lord Baratheon had predicted. But then Sansa had never had Renly Baratheon to advise her on that fateful day in the card room when Lord Baelish had cornered her and demanded his winnings – or if not his winnings in the form of her mother's diamonds, then a kiss – like the complete and utter cad he was.

Willas suspects that this truth is less a truth and more a fabrication of a certain group of ladies who would like, very much, to keep the eldest Miss Stark from gracing the ballrooms of high society.  Sansa is not capricious and prone to quirks like his sister and while certainly, he had seen her with the prince enough times to know how perilously close she had come to exposing herself to the censure of the _ton_ , she had always struck him then less as a knowing flirt and more as a young girl barely out of the schoolroom, dazzled by the attentions of such a noble personage as the prince himself.

This truth, he finds, is not as much a fabrication as he supposes when he asks her if she regrets her past – that he could help her _forget_ it – and finds that there is a flash of fire in her blue eyes – and then later that week, that she has struck up a daring flirtation with the broody and dangerous officer and ADC to the prince – and by ADC, of course, it means he must keep the prince’s wilder whims in check so that his uncles’ careful battle plans are not overthrown by his meddling – _and_ the prince’s uncle, who is a scholar, and, in Willas’ opinion, the _real_ strategist behind Lannister’s military victories.

The truth that Miss Stark will not let herself be led, ruled or even mildly censured surprises him pleasantly. But it hurts, nevertheless, the way her blue eyes watch him as though he is a stranger – as though he is another one of her many other beaus.

* * *

There are many ‘truths’ that Sansa has heard thrown around about Willas Tyrell. She knows, for example, the name the _ton_ calls him when his back is turned and the things they say he does. All the women he has supposedly ruined and worse, the women he has supposedly kidnapped from their London homes and left coffins at their doors in jest. Sansa knows that these two things are related. They are not so very different from the whispers that surround Tyrion Lannister whom she knows is a far better man than the prince will ever be.

Any man whom Lord Baelish thought boring could only be one thing: a wholesomely good man.

She is surprised, therefore, when Margaery scoffs at the suggestion. Taking pity on her, Margaery leans in and whispers the secret of Willas’ injury in Sansa’s ear. Sansa will find that this is not so much a secret so much as one of Margaery’s quirks which she cultivates with as much meticulous care as her brother Loras knots his cravats into Mathematicals and Orientals and other ridiculous creations.

Willas’ cravats are sensible but elegant and original in the same way that Willas is sensible and elegant and original. The truth, therefore, is all the more alarming. That Willas Tyrell had once been a Corinthian ( _a blood of the highest order_ , Margaery tells her confidentially), run with the Viper and his set and been a member, no less, of the Four Horse Club, is something quite difficult for Sansa to picture in the present though by Margaery’s account this had all happened only a year before she was out of the schoolroom. Staid Willas. Sensible Willas. Quiet Willas. Quiet Willas who once dueled the Viper on account of his trifling with Martell’s niece, Tyene Sand’s affections. Sensible Willas, who lost the use of his leg, not while serving on the continent, but by overturning his curricle on the Brighton road while racing Martell.

Sansa wonders how Margaery and Loras, with such an example to precede them, had chosen to go ahead with their own race.

“It runs in the family,” Margaery says guilelessly, in answer to the expression on Sansa’s face, “ _Wild_ roses.”

Sansa thinks it ironic that a man who was once a rake, or at least, a _Corinthian_ , should _dare_ tell her that his address should cover for her past crimes as though _she_ was guilty for having fallen prey to the lure of a dazzling smile and a title or for having a certain fondness for the table. The thought pricks at her and expands and expands until it consumes her and births a righteous fury inside her: how _dare_ he attempt to rule her, where he had once paid court to a young barely-out-of-schoolroom miss like her and been _dueled_ for it. Willas, she determines, requires a lesson and even though the hurt evident in his brown eyes stabs her too, she still laughs far too loud at the Imp’s witticisms.

* * *

The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle.

Willas learns this in the way, he realizes, that Sansa’s laughter grows brittle once the officers have left for Waterloo, and the way her blue eyes are more worried than amused. Her brother and her half-brother are only privates in the _infantry_ , thrown into battle with their fellow Highlanders and Scots. She has none of the certainty that both Willas and Margaery have concerning Loras and Garlan, that if they die or are injured, they will be found and brought to Brussels and not left on the battlefield.  Willas makes Garlan promise to look out for both young Robb Stark and Jon Snow. Garlan regards him quizzically at this request, as though trying to determine Willas’ _true_ motive for this request.

Willas only raises his eyebrow in mockery at Garlan’s quizzing and Garlan relents.

Sansa learns this in the way Willas proves himself capable and steady when the first of the wounded begin to arrive. There is something no-nonsense about the way he helps his mama tend the wounded and something even more reassuring in the way he manages to procure news about her brothers' regiments in the middle of all the chaos and the insistence that the French usurper has won this battle.

She learns it, most of all, in the way, when they are certain that Jaime Lannister and his forces cannot hold out, he finds her and takes both of her hands earnestly in his.

“Sansa,” he says earnestly, “Forgive me, please. I spoke against all my better judgement that night and consequently, gave offence where I intended none –“

“Where you intended none, sir?” she says, the colour in her cheeks heightening, “Your offence lay not in your words but in your presumptuousness in believing that _you_ could _deign_ to ignore my past, or at least _use your own address to cover my lack of it_ , as though I were no more than a mere _trinket_ for you to acquire and _preserve_.”

Willas’ hands shake, she thinks, and he has gone unnaturally pale but he regards her steadily with those hazel brown eyes.

Sansa does not try to remove her hands from his, though she wavers under that steady gaze and looks instead at his hands, long and elegant, holding hers.

“I beg pardon,” he says, with a voice that is strained, “I was wrong to have said that in the first place. Forgive me, Sansa, but believe me when I say that I would wish that you could forget your past, I only wish that you might have had all your schoolroom dreams. No one knows better than I what false fancies idle gossips can weave.”

 _Cripplegate_ , the _ton_ call him, and make a monster of him because of his limp, as though handsome Willas, the noted Corinthian, had never existed at all.

“You know,” she whispers, daring to look up at him for only a second, “And you accept it?”

His laugh is bitter, she thinks, and that is another truth – that such a _good_ man should have such bitterness, while men like his Royal Highness have all the blessings that life can afford.

“I have a few good friends whom I would trust with my life,” he says, “That is enough for _me_.”

The unspoken question hangs heavy in the air: _am I enough for_ you?

“May I,” he asks her, “Be allowed to be such a friend to you – and if you were willing, perhaps one day, more than that?”

Today could end in a myriad different ways – the Targaryen troops marching into the city and her brothers gone, or worse, her brothers captive. The war might yet swing the other way and the Targaryen usurper might lose and Lannister and his troops might yet save the day. Both death and life hang in the balance in equal measures and the truth –

 _Oh stuff the truth_ , she thinks, in a peculiarly unladylike fashion; an expression that would have sat easier on the tongue of her youngest brother Rickon.

“Yes,” she says softly, finally looking up at him and smiling gently, “I would like both.”

The final truth, Sansa learns, is that Willas’ lips on her knuckles make hope unfurl in her heart for the first time.

It is incredible, Willas realizes, how much people can miss through their preoccupations with themselves. Miss Stark is neither as wild as the gossips write her, nor as demure as Margaery suggests she is, when she kisses him as they stand by the window, where all the Bruxelloise can see.

“ _Miss Stark_ ,” he whispers, in a perfect parody of the Dowager Lady Tyrell's shocked tones.

The final truth, Willas learns, is that Sansa Stark’s laugh is sunshine, morning and hope.

On the street below, the whispers become shouts of joy – _Lannister and his troops have beat the Targaryens back across the border_.

**Author's Note:**

> ADC: Aide-de-camp.
> 
> [Corinthian](http://candicehern.com/regency-world/glossary/): Regency slang for men who were both extremely fashionable and very fond of sporting activities. A Corinthian might be a rake (an extraordinary flirt/womanizer) but not all Corinthians were rakes. 
> 
> Margaery racing Loras Tyrell on the Brighton road is a tribute to one of my favourite Georgette Heyer novels, _Regency Buck_. The plot of this fic is loosely inspired by another novel of hers, _An Infamous Army_. 
> 
> [The Four Horse Club](http://18thcand19thc.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/four-horse-club.html) was an elite gentlemen's club whose members were famous for driving a curricle and four and their members' 'uniform': blue-and-yellow striped waistcoats.
> 
> [Cripplegate](http://scratch-the-irish-canadian.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-antiquarian-last-earl-of-barrymore.html) was the actual nickname of Henry Barrymore, younger brother of the 7th Earl of Barrymore, later the 8th Earl of Barrymore. There were plenty of rumours about his character, a lot of them dubious and very much related to the fact that he was born with a club foot.


End file.
